Face your Fears: A Deeper Look into Panic Attacks and How we can Help Put an End to Them

Your heart starts racing, sweat starts pouring down your face, suddenly you feel nauseated, there’s a golf ball stuck in your throat, your chest tightens and suddenly it’s hard to breath.. it’s so hard that you know you’re about to have a heart attack; this feeling will never end. Sound familiar? If it does, then you may be suffering from a panic attack. Although it may seem like the episode will last forever, a panic attack rarely lasts for more than half an hour. But caught in the moment and it seems like time slows and you’ll never escape this throat clencher. 

It’s easy to say, “Well, it looks like you’re having a panic attack, take some benzos and do some deep breathing during the episode.” This is usually the treatment for a panic attack. But this is only a temporary solution to a long-term problem. The first thing you would want to know is how to stop a panic attack for good. Deep breathing, yoga, exercise, stress-relief and getting a decent amount of rest are all helpful but rarely give a permanent solution to a panic attack. The key to stopping a panic attack is to understand what causes a panic attack in the first place, find the deepest fear within you and cleanse the body of this fear, which is what we can do at Amita Holistic Healing Center.

A panic attack happens where there is an overwhelming feeling of dread, anxiety, and fear. But where is this coming from? When we are faced with stressful situations such as an upcoming exam, getting fired, a car that ran a red light right in front of you, losing a loved one, etc. our body releases a large amount of catecholamines such as cortiosol, epinephrine, adrenaline, causing our body to react. Normally these chemical reactions serve as a survival tool. In cases such as an exam, it can actually be a good thing because the stress response can increase our concentration and focus. For a car that runs a red light, it causes us to immediately respond to the threat in front of us. But what happens when the threat is not immediate, but re-occuring? For example, losing a job will leave you wondering how you will pay the bills, support your family? And how about losing a loved one, how is the stress response a good thing? In the last two cases, the surge of catecholamines released can cause our body to stay in an extreme state of anxiety that eventually lead to the dreaded panic attack. As humans, we will do anything to avoid the factors that predispose us to facing the same fear over and over again. But let’s go back to the scenario of losing a job. If someone who is already anxious about his new unemployment and sees a homeless man- the fear of this being his own future will set off a panic attack, the body’s warning system going off rapidly. If someone lost a loved one, driving past funeral homes or walking into a hospital will set off an alarm again, triggering the fear response. Sometimes it’s hard to pinpoint the exact connection between what sets off the panic attack, but that’s where our unique panic attack therapy can help you.